Jumpstarting Your Crowdsourcing with a Bounty

Every business hopes to use the power of the crowd to spread the word about their fabulous products and services. Many are disappointed when they put this awesome offer out there and no one picks it up. Or they create and post a hilarious video that no one shares. What gives? Maybe you need some sort of enticement (or a bounty) to get things kicked off…

Scott Klososky recently published a new book, Enterprise Social Technology: Helping Organizations Harness the Power of Social Media, Social Networking, Social Relevance (affiliate link), which is also one of the first books to be crowdsourced from start to finish (cover design, content creation and publicity). As part of his marketing efforts, he has set up a series of “bounties” in return for promoting his book.

Not just free books or “stuff”, Scott is actually offering cash in return for promoting his book to your network. Two of my favorites:

It’s also possible to get great word-of-mouth without offering a bounty — just look at Gary Vaynerchuk, who instead thanks everyone individually for their efforts. Even if you don’t have a lot of cash, offering some sort of reward or enticement (free consulting? free copies?), in return for some promotion, may help get things started.

Obviously it’s nice when people just promote your stuff by themselves, but even then, people need to know about what you’re offering. Building up a great network by doing nice things for others helps build a platform where you can turn to people when you do have something you need help with.

What are your thoughts? Would you help promote Scott’s stuff for a bounty? What about someone in your network?

(photo by pasukaru76, on Flickr)